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For those 170+ scorers - how did you improve LR
Marco Antonio
Alum Member
Hello everyone, this post is inspired by the fact that I just got wrecked on both LR sections on a PT. While I normally score -4 or -5 I got a -7 and -8 this time. The infuriating part is that I because have finally improved my RC and LG to a consistently high level (-4 & -3 respectively on past PT) I decided to dedicate this past week to fortifying some weak areas in LR. Unfortunately, it seems like my efforts were counterproductive. I spent most of my time doing 4/5 star questions untimed to focus on the thought process. I am wondering whether this was counter productive - maybe it hurt my confidence? Other than BR what other techniques can I utilize to bring my score down below a -4 on LR?
Comments
Why does it seem like your efforts were counterproductive?
When you took your last PT/sections and went -7/-8, what exactly did you set out to improve on. I find with LR, the more specific you can get with your drilling the more you'll improve. Knowing which question types you missed and why you missed them is a great place to start. Did you get them during BR? If so, maybe you need to work on timing. Did you miss questions that belong to the same family; e.g., assumption/flaw questions? Any other patterns you noticed? Perhaps missing questions towards the end of the section.
I think most of the time, if you're missing more than 4 or 5 on each LR section, then there's room for macro-improvement of the fundamentals.
Are you doing 25 questions in 25 min? Do you have an effective skipping strategy? Are you running out of time? We need a little more info to help
Additionally, what were the difficulty of these questions. If you are missing mostly the harder/hardest questions, it perhaps means that you are spending too much times on the easier questions and not leaving enough time for the harder questions. If you are missing the easy/medium level questions, it means that the fundamentals definitely need work.
First, I just wanted to mention that there are probably tons of people who score(d) under 170 who may have particularly useful advice on topics like this one. I was consistently getting -1/2 on LR before scoring 170s. Perhaps even more useful would be to hear from people who started out with LR in dumpster, but were able to improve substantially.
The two things that worked well for me were writing out my reasoning during BR, at least for particularly hairy questions, and also finding a skipping/timing pattern that worked for me. A lot of people have improved significantly with the 25-in-25 strategy, so maybe you can push for that if you aren't already. Another thing I've seen recommended, and used myself for a bit, are the confidence drills. I don't know if there is written up description of these on the site (maybe @"Alex Divine" knows), but I got the idea from watching the @"Cant Get Right" Q&A.
Also I wouldn't get too discouraged by one bad PT, everyone has those once in a while.
Ahh, yes. Confidence drills. These are essentially a drill whereby you set out to complete a timed LR section as quickly as you can. You want to feel free to be reckless and choose answer choices much more quickly than you would on a regular section. You read a question, pick your answer, and move on. As the name suggests, the point is to test your confidence so you can calibrate it. I strong recommend you do these confidence drills on video so you can get an objective view of yourself taking the section. Sometimes the amount of time you spent on a question doesn't tell the whole story.
Do note that you should expect to see a score drop the first few times you do these confidence drills. The point isn't to go -0, but to see where you can afford to go faster the next time you take a section/PT. Under confidence in selecting answer choices on easier LR questions is something one must overcome to score in the high 160s and 170s.
Thanks everyone for contributing to this thread. It's immensely helpful. So during BR I only missed 2 out of the 14 that I missed on the real thing. I agree that my fundamentals probably need work; in particular, I need to work on diagramming and approaching conditional statements properly. I tend to freeze up on these under time. Timing is also smart. I haven't tried the 25 in 25 strategy. I will test that out in the upcoming weeks, but for now I think part of the problem is a confidence issue as well as a fundamentals issue.
How does the 25 in 25 work - how many can you skip within that timeframe?
As many as you need to in order to put eyes on all 25 in 25 minutes. For me, it usually means skipping 3 or 4. But if you need to skip 5-6, that's fine too. The exercise is really all about working out your under confidence errors and making sure you're building up your skipping skills.
Yeah, like Alex said, as many as you need to. If you are currently taking near whole 35 minutes, or perhaps not finishing in the allotted time, doing LR in this way will feel completely foreign and shaky, but don't feel put off because of that. At the very least it's a good strategy to try out for at least a couple weeks, and re-evaluate from there.
I do want to add that I think you should be scoring at least 20-21 (-4 or better) points on an LR section before you implement confidence drills into your prep. I think if you're missing more than 4-5 questions on an LR section, you need to return to your LSAT materials/CC and address those things first before worrying about speed/skipping/pacing. Missing that many questions, at least to me, means there is work to be on your fundamentals.
@"Marco Antonio", On the bright side, we can be glad this didn't happen on test day. There's still time to improve and I'm confident improvement is going to occur.
I read about half the comments in this thread and noticed a a lot of mention of speed and skipping. People who score 170+ don't worry about speed and skipping.
A 170 is approx. 10 missed questions over the course of all four sections. With this in mind for the low range of your question lets assume Mr. 170 misses -3 on average per LR section. Mr. 170 gets to this point by thoroughly understanding and getting about 21/25 correct. There are perhaps three/four questions in a section he is unsure of but can usually narrow down to a 50-50. Zero/one question will absolutely stump Mr. 170.
I don't think it can be stated strongly enough that a 170+ scorer does not sacrifice a thorough understanding of a question for the sake of speed. An exception to this is one or two tough questions per section where one just has to give their best answer after toiling for 3-3.5 minutes. If this happens to you just give your best effort on that question and move on. Unless you have a lot of extra time at the end this is probably the best understanding you'll have of the question. I respectfully disagree with the 25 in 25 method because what is the point of seeing additional questions if you can't understand them, predict the answer, or most importantly- get them correct reliably?
BR and regular reviewing absolutely work. Try to match your level of concentration and intensity during this portion of your study to that of taking the actual section.
Interesting, I was wondering when it would be the right time to implement this.
Also, is the 25 in 25 a type of confidence drill? Or, is this something one should strive to do as a test taking strategy for LR in general, meaning confidence drills are a means to eventually being able to get through 25 in 25?
It's definitely a confidence drill, but I think for certain high scorers it can be an effective strategy on PTs to ensure you have enough time to get any questions that gave you trouble. I, however, never really focused too much on my speed; only on my accuracy. I found that once I got really good at doing the easy/medium questions, I naturally had time to go back and complete the 3-4 I would skip per LR section that I found hard. I think though that ultimately I do instinctually aim for the 25/25 mark, or thereabouts. I know if I'm getting to q 25 with only a few minutes or so left, that I've squandered time somewhere along the way. So it also serves as a nice litmus test to ensure I've used my time properly.
Lastly, I also do not try to get -0 on my LR section. I allow myself (more like force myself) to miss 2 questions per section. This advice/strategy has changed my LR performance more than almost anything else. I think it's important to always judge your scores based on where you were yesterday, not your goal score. All that to say, if you're missing -4 on LR today, don't aim for -0 tomorrow because a) the test isn't designed to be gamed in any way, b) aiming for a perfect score when you're not extremely close is hurting you and is the very thing keeping you from said score. As a matter fact, I didn't ever achieve my first -0 on any LR section until I started allowing myself to not aim for it. You have to work your way there. As improvement on the LSAT is an iterative process.
Most important post to read here.
I disagree with this slightly. In most cases you are correct, but sometimes a question may stump you due to misread of a crucial term, or missed negation. For situations like these, even a quick read in 5 minutes, with "fresh" eyes can help. But I concede that these shouldn't happen often.
The only reason I mentioned 25-in-25 is because it's a strategy that, I know, has helped many people (including multiple 170+ scorers) get better results. I suggested this to OP as something they could try (on top of thorough and regular review), and not as a definitive answer to all LR related troubles. I also don't believe that this will work for everyone. I do believe that different testing abilities might align better or worse with different people so it doesn't hurt to experiment with a few over the course of the prep. In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit that I dropped the 25-in-25 strategy pretty soon after trying, as I saw that it wasn't working for me. My actual LR strategy was much closer to what you describe in your post, with me finishing a section in about 33 minutes, with usually not more than 1 skip.
I also respectfully disagree with your statement that 170+ scorers don't worry about speed and skipping. Understanding questions and underlying logic is fundamental to the entire LSAT-taking experience. But if this understanding doesn't happen quickly, those high scores will still be unreachable. Worrying about speed and pushing it as much as possible (without sacrificing accuracy) is precisely what helped me to go from -3/-4 to -0/-1 on LR, and break my 168 plateau and get into 170s.
But if your process was minimal skipping, in what sense do you mean that worrying about speed is what helped on LR? It seems you weren't doing much skipping or rushing?
The thing about it is, it's important to remember that your timing is ultimately a reflection of how good you are at solving the questions. If you're good, you'll naturally be able to go through sections more quickly. Conversely, If you're weak on certain questions and still need lots of work, you'll naturally go slower.
I also think that when it comes to strategies like these, there is no one objective, correct way to do things. It's possible that there are 2 effective ways to do things. You have to test out strategies and see what works for you. I honestly find skipping strategies helpful. I was stuck at -4 consistently until I began skipping. Then, almost immediately, I began to see my score move to the -2 range without really doing anything else differently.
However, I think it's possible to get good enough that you're able to just move through the sections without having to skip. But I don't necessarily think it's the most strategic way to take the section. Firstly, sometimes you read a question and are missing something or misunderstanding something. Your mind gets stuck in a certain mode when reading the question at hand, and it's extremely hard to see what you're misunderstanding or overlooking. I find that when this happens simply skipping it and coming back remedies this quite well. As @pioneer321 said, sometimes just a set of "fresh" eyes can help. Secondly, JY makes a good argument for the economics of the "low hanging coconut" which you can read here: https://7sage.com/why-you-have-to-skip-questions-on-the-lsat/
I think largely this debate is like the stem vs. stim first debate. I know many high scorers from each camp. That to me indicates that there isn't one "right" way to do things. I do think there are more strategic ways to do things though...
I'm not averaging a 170 just yet, but my recent average (for 2018) is -1.7 on LR so I think I can give some ok advice.
For me the key was becoming extremely ruthless with each answer choice. IMO you have to get quick at knowing when an answer choice just isn't relevant and then eliminating it. The LSAT will try and get you to waste time with interesting and/or relevant sounding answer choices, but often they just don't do the job you're looking for (e.g. weakening the argument). A necessary condition on doing this well is being able to really pin down what the stimulus is actually arguing.
The way I developed this was trying to mimic the way J.Y. attacks an LR question in his videos, but just faster. When he does an LR question in his video explanations he is always looking for argument structures, premises, conclusions.
I found that developing this skill in turn helped on flaw/strengthen questions, and also parallel method of (flawed) reasoning questions.
Also I save a lot of time by hunting for very easy answer choices on things like main conclusion questions. I find the right one and just move on, I rarely bother reading the other answer choices.
My timing is normally 15 in 15, and I typically have 5 minutes left after the final question. I normally end up skipping one question entirely on my first pass and normally have about 5 questions where I am <90% sure on the answer choice.
I have not done it, but I think you can skip as many as > @danjamesdanjames said:
I would argue that you are right in a way and wrong in a way. In my opinion, people expecting to score virtually perfect on logical reasoning probably don't need to worry about skipping. It is likely a waste of time for them and a distraction from getting the answer right.
For everyone else, it is a balancing act. By going through the questions quickly and skipping the hard ones you gain information about the test. This can help you better allocate your time among the harder questions. However, you also waste time and concentration thinking about whether to skip and reaquainting yourself with the question.
As you score better, the benefits shrink faster than the costs. So someone missing 4 or 5 LR questions per section might get to an average of -2 by skipping, but then later find that as they have improved that skipping strategy is what is stopping them from getting to an average between -1 and -0 by wasting their time.